The Bible mentions Caesar too. Can't have 100% made-up nonsense in a book you want people to believe is true. Did a flood happen? Probably. Did a "global flood" happen where a 600 year old guy built a big as boat and put 2 of every animal on it? No.

Britney Spear's Speculum:The Bible mentions Caesar too. Can't have 100% made-up nonsense in a book you want people to believe is true. Did a flood happen? Probably. Did a "global flood" happen where a 600 year old guy built a big as boat and put 2 of every animal on it? No.

Oh, the "two of every creature" tidbit. I forgot to deconstruct that part. (Please note that this is not directed at you in particular, Speculum -- I'm just exposing the Flood Myth as a myth.)

In order for penguins, elephants, poison dart frogs, møøse, honey badgers, polar bears, panda bears, panthers, ocelots, Iriomote cats, Gila monsters, Komodo dragons, Galapagos tortoises, Tasmanian devils and duck-billed platypi to have survived the Flood, they must have first been herded onto the Ark. Those animals are generally not found in the Middle East, nor is there much record of them in any historical documents from the region.

Then there's the issue of not only getting the animals on board, but also 40 days' worth of food for the animals -- some of whom have diets consisting entirely of other animals (the zoologist who came up with the name for the anteater was probably not engaging in an April Fool's prank at the time). Not to mention the honey badgers would have snatched other animals' food straight out of their mouths, eaten the food in front of them, and then killed and eaten the other animals.

And once the food issue is resolved, there's the issue of waste management. Indoor plumbing had yet to make it to the drawing board at the time of the Flood, much less onto seafaring vessels. The aroma in that indoor petting zoo would very likely have been less than pleasant.

And after all that is settled, and the waters receded (where to?) and the Ark finally made landfall, it was time to send the animals home -- but how? How did the one male and one female platypus make it from Mount Ararat to Australia? How'd the Tasmanian devils go past the Australian mainland to Tasmania? By what means did the poison dart frogs get from Turkey to Bolivia? Did the panthers and ocelots swim to Mexico? What about the møøse, how long did it take for them to walk to Sweden? Iriomote-jima is an island slightly larger than Brooklyn, about a hundred miles east of Taiwan -- must have been all sorts of fun for the two Iriomote cats to travel across Persia, India and China to get to a coastline several hundred miles of ocean away from their home, though they probably rode atop the Komodo dragons or the pandas most of the way. The Gila monsters were somewhat less fortunate on their trek to Arizona -- though they would have found the trip across the Sahara desert enjoyable, they would have found the trip across the Atlantic Ocean, the Everglades, the Mississippi bayou and the river basins of eastern and central Texas slightly-less-than-enjoyable.

The honey badgers would have hitched a ride to southern Africa with the elephants, and then killed and eaten the elephants before they had a chance to repopulate the region -- a task which would have involved quite a bit of inbreeding.

Ballard has mor eor less conclusively proved there was a catastrophic flood that brought the water of the Med into the black sea. The Black Sea's unusual composition, salt water on top, fresh water farther down really can't be easily explained any other way. Morevover, I personally believe that the reason almost every culture on earth has a "flood story" is because there WERE catastrophic global floods all over the world, just not all at once the way the bible tells it. Go look at a map of Ice Age Europe and then look at it again after the glaciers melted. The English channel, for example used to be a land bridge. Futher We know people lived on that land bridge becuase, just like Ballard did in the Black Sea, we've found evidence of villages and human habitations at the bottom of the channel. So yeah, since people do tend to live near the water (look at a poulation map of the world even today) and the water levels dramatically rose over a few hundred year stretch. I have no doubt it was traumatic experience for nearly every human on earth and was enshrined in all sorts of story-telling traditions

The fact that "the Flood" shows up in all sorts of traditions proves to a fundamentalist friend of mine that the Bible must be true, because so much of it is corroborated. He can never explain how it's the other things corroborating the Bible and not vice-versa, though...

vharshyde:Let's look at the physics, shall we? In order for a flood to occur, water has to come from one place and be distributed to another place. So let's look at this.

9 inches/hr is one of the highest rainfall records I've seen thus far. So let's do the math. Over a 40 day period at 24 hours per day(40 days and 40 nights, as they say), that leaves a total deposit of 720 feet. Not a small number, but wait, there's more. That comes down to about .13 miles in depth. Which is still pretty nasty. However, for that to be global, here's what that would come out to.

The total landmass of earth = 57,308,738 square miles...Total depth of water = .13 miles...Assuming a flat earth(To give us a much better round-down, so this number should be MUCH higher, but I'm too lazy to do spherical volumes here), it would leave us with roughly 7.8 million cubic miles of water.

So let's break that down into gallons.

One gallon of water is roughly 7.48 cubic feet.The total cubic miles listed above gives us... 1,148,144,025,600 cubic feet of water.Which would translate to roughly 153,495,190,588 Gallons of water. Which I would estimate that in order to create that volume of clouds(Constant, as well), which would require direct sunlight on every major water source, and only clouds over every land mass for a 40 day period, would require a very sudden rise in energy as received by the surface of the planet, on ALL sides, a shifting of major wind channels and currents, and the like. Which wouldn't work out so well for the science of it all.

But that number above... Just above a tenth of a mile in depth... That should have some level of significance, shouldn't it?

A few problems here. First off, the book mentions the Mountains of Ararat. However, these mountains are in entirely the wrong geographic direction from the supposed launch point, so that's done with(Raleigh went into this). In fact, Raleigh contended that the mountains in question must have been the taller peaks out towards Asia. And ...

duh.. when god relented and let the waters part, theland sprung back from all the weight now taken off and world actually grew in size

Ballard has mor eor less conclusively proved there was a catastrophic flood that brought the water of the Med into the black sea. The Black Sea's unusual composition, salt water on top, fresh water farther down really can't be easily explained any other way. Morevover, I personally believe that the reason almost every culture on earth has a "flood story" is because there WERE catastrophic global floods all over the world, just not all at once the way the bible tells it. Go look at a map of Ice Age Europe and then look at it again after the glaciers melted. The English channel, for example used to be a land bridge. Futher We know people lived on that land bridge becuase, just like Ballard did in the Black Sea, we've found evidence of villages and human habitations at the bottom of the channel. So yeah, since people do tend to live near the water (look at a poulation map of the world even today) and the water levels dramatically rose over a few hundred year stretch. I have no doubt it was traumatic experience for nearly every human on earth and was enshrined in all sorts of story-telling traditions

I've heard a theory proposed about glacial lakes. So you've got a mile high glacier, but it's melting on the inside and forming this big-damn lake, possible larger than the great lakes. It's surface is a MILE above the land. At some point the glacier dam breaks and the water pours out in a mile high fresh water flood.

Posting before reading comments as I haven't yet added the dash of gin to my tea which would up my patience threshold, and I'm sure it's already been covered but what the hell....

Nobody is disputing that there was, or at least may certainly very well have been a local massive flood in the Middle East around the time that the Biblical story is said to have happened. In fact, It's highly likely that there was given that's how legends and myths start. However, having some basis in historical truth does not automatically mean that the mythologised version of events happened exactly as described.Biblical literalists claiming that the whole world was covered in water because the Bible says so seem to forget that after the flood the Bible says that the whole world was completely dry.

Rent Party:Magorn: "based on real events" is not the same as "actually happened"

Ballard has mor eor less conclusively proved there was a catastrophic flood that brought the water of the Med into the black sea. The Black Sea's unusual composition, salt water on top, fresh water farther down really can't be easily explained any other way. Morevover, I personally believe that the reason almost every culture on earth has a "flood story" is because there WERE catastrophic global floods all over the world, just not all at once the way the bible tells it. Go look at a map of Ice Age Europe and then look at it again after the glaciers melted. The English channel, for example used to be a land bridge. Futher We know people lived on that land bridge becuase, just like Ballard did in the Black Sea, we've found evidence of villages and human habitations at the bottom of the channel. So yeah, since people do tend to live near the water (look at a poulation map of the world even today) and the water levels dramatically rose over a few hundred year stretch. I have no doubt it was traumatic experience for nearly every human on earth and was enshrined in all sorts of story-telling traditions

[geocurrents.info image 450x300]

The largest waterfall ever to have existed came over this ledge. The Missoula floods would have been awesome to behold.

And yet, no one calls them "global." Because, you know, they were "regional."

it was just a reporting incident... the geoglobal weather satellites of Noah's time reported it as global when in fact it was regional...

Now this really pisses me off. I have a bachelors in Historical Anthropology and let me let you in on a little secret that we in the archaeological community have known since the 20's. Biblical "Archaeology" has absolutely no basis in reality. Its a bunch of true believers trying to prove that their religion and by extension their god is real. Not for nothing but Bob Ballard, Simcha Jocobovici, Jim Cameron and the other dumbasses who try to "prove" this nonsense are not in fact archaeologists.Their opinions, assertions and conclusions have no more validity or credibility than the average layman. Bob Ballard has a degree in Marine Biology, Jim Cameron's is in film and Simcha Jocobovici's is in Journalism. These idiot shills know little more than you can pick up watching the History channel. If these guys had discovered anything worth mentioning why have none received honorary doctorates in Anthropology? (standard practice when a non-vocational archaeologist makes a discovery of any, and I mean any importance) They don't and they never will because things like the John ossuary, the biblical flood and the resting place of Jesus are either fakes or sensationalized to the point of invalidity, as is the case here. But then again the goal of these people is not to uncover truth or fact but to get fat christian hausfraus to tune in to their latest 44 minute infomercial for stupidity.

King Something:In order for penguins, elephants, poison dart frogs, møøse, honey badgers, polar bears, panda bears, panthers, ocelots, Iriomote cats, Gila monsters, Komodo dragons, Galapagos tortoises, Tasmanian devils and duck-billed platypi to have survived the Flood, they must have first been herded onto the Ark. Those animals are generally not found in the Middle East, nor is there much record of them in any historical documents from the region.

According to a controversial theory proposed by two Columbia University scientists, there really was one in the Black Sea region. They believe that the now-salty Black Sea was once an isolated freshwater lake surrounded by farmland, until it was flooded by an enormous wall of water from the rising Mediterranean Sea. The force of the water was two hundred times that of Niagara Falls, sweeping away everything in its path.

Fascinated by the idea, Ballard and his team decided to investigate.

"We went in there to look for the flood," he said. "Not just a slow moving, advancing rise of sea level, but a really big flood that then stayed... The land that went under stayed under."

Four hundred feet below the surface, they unearthed an ancient shoreline, proof to Ballard that a catastrophic event did happen in the Black Sea. By carbon dating shells found along the shoreline, Ballard said he believes they have established a timeline for that catastrophic event, which he estimates happened around 5,000 BC. Some experts believe this was around the time when Noah's flood could have occurred.

So, other than the flood being local to the Black Sea as opposed to the ENTIRE PLANET, the account is accurate.

Strangely though, God promises Noah that he won't use such a flood again (and gives us the rainbow as proof of his commitment), yet we still see terrible, localized floods several times a year.

So, if we take this story as proof that the Bible's account is correct, it also means that God is a liar.

bookman:Magorn: "based on real events" is not the same as "actually happened"

Ballard has mor eor less conclusively proved there was a catastrophic flood that brought the water of the Med into the black sea. The Black Sea's unusual composition, salt water on top, fresh water farther down really can't be easily explained any other way. Morevover, I personally believe that the reason almost every culture on earth has a "flood story" is because there WERE catastrophic global floods all over the world, just not all at once the way the bible tells it. Go look at a map of Ice Age Europe and then look at it again after the glaciers melted. The English channel, for example used to be a land bridge. Futher We know people lived on that land bridge becuase, just like Ballard did in the Black Sea, we've found evidence of villages and human habitations at the bottom of the channel. So yeah, since people do tend to live near the water (look at a poulation map of the world even today) and the water levels dramatically rose over a few hundred year stretch. I have no doubt it was traumatic experience for nearly every human on earth and was enshrined in all sorts of story-telling traditions

I've heard a theory proposed about glacial lakes. So you've got a mile high glacier, but it's melting on the inside and forming this big-damn lake, possible larger than the great lakes. It's surface is a MILE above the land. At some point the glacier dam breaks and the water pours out in a mile high fresh water flood.

I do believe the massive ancient floods in the Pacific Northwest were related to a glacial lake related event. Might have been the English channel as well (or ice damn?).

Anyway, that would've been a farking sight to behold. So long as you didn't die.

One good one would be the formation of the mediterranean. Another good one was at the end of the last ice age there was a HUGE flood in the north sea (which made a fair amount of the english channel) when an ice wall broke (you can see the water channels on google earth). It would be about the right time to enter folklore and be part of the bible as ancient `history`

i'm pretty sure that most stories in most texts that are finally recorded after a long period of oral history are based on real history.

for example, there was a trojan war, even though the poem was only recorded 700 years later and it certainly exaggerated stuff.

for example, there's a lot of support to the notion the Odysseus actually went on a wild journey, (the lotus eaters where poppy growers in the middle east, the cyclops was actually just a tall guy missing an eye, etc.) there are descriptions that sailors have come to conclude where the journey may have gone. and then 700 years of oral tradition mucks the story up and there is some exaggerated stuff.

for example, a lot of the history in beowulf is corroborated (when it comes to names of kings, etc. not that part of the story that deals with grendel, the dragon, or beowulf) and those histories occurred 400-600 years before being recorded. so well recorded, shakespeare even based hamlet off of heremode, who was an actual king mentioned in beowulf (he was the first one with the pendant that caused all the trouble... likely the same 'ring' myth that hit all the other germanic texts and wagner and tolkien)

now, the old testament was an oral tradition for centuries before being recorded. so, there was a flood story. then it became a global flood story... then, poof, it becomes the version that got recorded.

with centuries of oral tradition, recorded during great political upheaval, there are going to be some anomalies. not to mention, it's the old testament. people should spend more time reading the new testament (except revelations, that should never have been canonized -- read that like a gnostic text, goofy ass shiat that's interesting historically, not dogmatically).

Waldo Pepper:Lionel Mandrake: Waldo Pepper: it is amazing for a bunch of folks who don't believe in God and the Bible just how much time is spent whining about it.

Not really...it is amazing how so many people who think it's the divine word of God know absolutely nothing about it, but still believe it over science.

my statement is about non believing farkers spending so much time and effort whining about God and the Bible. I have no belief in aliens from other planets, astrology etc, etc and I spend zero of my time whining about these beliefs

fusillade762:The sheer air pressure from that much water in the atmosphere would turn every creature on Earth into a fine paste.

You know how I know you don't follow current Worldwide Flood Apologists? It wasn't just the rain coming down, but the "fountains of the deep" too. Perfectly plausible that a cataclysmic event ruptured aquifers below and that too induced rapid flooding all over. Boom, science

God is angry at humanity and decides it needs to be reset or something like that...

So he tells the only righteous people on the planet how to save themselves and the animals...

Then he drowns all the other people in the world to death (fun way to die) and I guess they all go to hell right?

But here's the thing... he sends a rainbow as a sign that he will never do that to mankind again...

so...

Was he wrong to do that? Should he not have done that?

If he promises to never do it again, then he implies that it was a bad thing to do. If it was a proper or good thing to do, then why not reserve the right to do it again?

It's almost as if it doesn't make any sense at all.

Read you Bible. The context of that "never again" was that God will never again bring judgement upon the earth with water. Instead, the final judgement will be flame/fire. Rampant evil cannot and will not be tolerated. The precedent has been set that the willful disregard of God will result in punishment. What you see through the Bible is the redemption story.

The penalty for sin is death, but...there is always a chance to be redeemed from you sins. The fall of Adam and Eve in the garden meant death officially entered the world, but redemption though the promise of a savior to "crush" the head of Satan. The world grew more and more wicked in Noah's day, but redemption came through sparing the one righteous man (whom through his sons would create all the great nations...). The times of the Judges were a perfect microcosm of showing God's love in the midst of punishment for turning from him. The great kings of Israel and Judah were the same way. This endless cycle comes to a head with the coming of Jesus as the redeemer for all the world's sins. From here on, there is no need for a picture of redemption to spring from the ashes of destruction, for the picture of redemption already came in Jesus. The final worldwide punishment for sin, detailed in Revelation will be the second and last time God brings down the hammer on sin.

To answer you, God never said destroying to purge sin was a "bad" or "good" thing to do. He is the Light, sinful ways are the darkness. When you turn the light on, darkness naturally flees from it. God and darkness simply cannot cohabit. But rather than take that at its base value and saying God is capricious and callous, simply destroying at whim. The promise is important! It shows that He actually cares about the affairs of men, is active in our world, and wants what is best for us. Had there been no rainbow, or boon, Noah probably would be left scratching his head, wondering what it all was for.

Is that you have no way to prove that the Bible is God's word. In fact, the evidence is pretty strong that it's the ramblings of several different men who only claimed to be talking to God.

Well, here's what's wrong with that: There's a guy in my town. A huffer. He talks to God, too.

So what you're really telling me is that if someone says "God said it" then you refuse to doubt it, and that means you're going to be doing what people who were probably totally stoned (and/or lying) said to do. That seems like poor judgment to me. It seems to lack wisdom.

How do you determine what God said? I say that you really can't know whether or not the words of prophets and saints and Biblical authors is to be trusted, and that the claim that "God said so" isn't really a lot to go on.

These are the descendants of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God. And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw that the earth was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth. And God said to Noah, "I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth. Make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above; and put the door of the ark in its side; make it with lower, second, and third decks. For my part, I am going to bring a flood of waters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish my covenant with you; and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you. And of every living thing, of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every kind shall come in to you, to keep them alive. Also take with you every kind of food that is eaten, and store it up; and it shall serve as food for you and for them." Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him. Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came on the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and ...

0Icky0:King Something: In order for penguins, elephants, poison dart frogs, møøse, honey badgers, polar bears, panda bears, panthers, ocelots, Iriomote cats, Gila monsters, Komodo dragons, Galapagos tortoises, Tasmanian devils and duck-billed platypi to have survived the Flood, they must have first been herded onto the Ark. Those animals are generally not found in the Middle East, nor is there much record of them in any historical documents from the region.

Le Grand Inquisitor:The times of the Judges were a perfect microcosm of showing God's love in the midst of punishment for turning from him.

"He only hits me because he loves me."

"Baby, how come you gotta me me hit you? You know I love you."

He is the Light, sinful ways are the darkness. When you turn the light on, darkness naturally flees from it. God and darkness simply cannot cohabit.

Getting rid of darkness will really screw up circadian rhythms, not to mention killing visible-spectrum astronomy. Let's not get started on the accelerated climate change if there's no nocturnal cooling period...

Ballard has mor eor less conclusively proved there was a catastrophic flood that brought the water of the Med into the black sea. The Black Sea's unusual composition, salt water on top, fresh water farther down really can't be easily explained any other way. Morevover, I personally believe that the reason almost every culture on earth has a "flood story" is because there WERE catastrophic global floods all over the world, just not all at once the way the bible tells it. Go look at a map of Ice Age Europe and then look at it again after the glaciers melted. The English channel, for example used to be a land bridge. Futher We know people lived on that land bridge becuase, just like Ballard did in the Black Sea, we've found evidence of villages and human habitations at the bottom of the channel. So yeah, since people do tend to live near the water (look at a poulation map of the world even today) and the water levels dramatically rose over a few hundred year stretch. I have no doubt it was traumatic experience for nearly every human on earth and was enshrined in all sorts of story-telling traditions

Umm, or maybe something like happened in Japan? People seem to rule out other obvious methods of moving massive amounts of water. And stories do become quite embellished as they are told over and over. Once they are eventually written down that seems to slow/stop.

Waldo Pepper:Lionel Mandrake: Waldo Pepper: it is amazing for a bunch of folks who don't believe in God and the Bible just how much time is spent whining about it.

Not really...it is amazing how so many people who think it's the divine word of God know absolutely nothing about it, but still believe it over science.

my statement is about non believing farkers spending so much time and effort whining about God and the Bible. I have no belief in aliens from other planets, astrology etc, etc and I spend zero of my time whining about these beliefs

Well of course. You are 100% right. There is no reason for you to use your brain ever again. All answers are "Because god ________". Simple minds tend to flock to religion since they cannot understand otherwise.

Waldo Pepper:Flappyhead: Waldo Pepper:so you are saying your figures apply to God and because your figures say it doesn't add up then God must not be able to make it happen?

No, we're saying our figures apply to reality. Get back to me when God does. Better yet, don't get back to me at all, I have no time for circular arguments.

then why did you bother to post, was it to show off your math skills?

Because some people use something called logic. Most of them don't worship an invisible sky fairy who secretly hates groups of people and kills them but then says "Don't do the stuff I do but somehow live life in my image". The whole friggin book you gain your teaching from constantly contradicts itself. It is sort of like it is a bunch of different idea's written by different people then combined into one single book without any fact checking.

Bondith:Le Grand Inquisitor: The times of the Judges were a perfect microcosm of showing God's love in the midst of punishment for turning from him.

"He only hits me because he loves me."

"Baby, how come you gotta me me hit you? You know I love you."

He is the Light, sinful ways are the darkness. When you turn the light on, darkness naturally flees from it. God and darkness simply cannot cohabit.

Getting rid of darkness will really screw up circadian rhythms, not to mention killing visible-spectrum astronomy. Let's not get started on the accelerated climate change if there's no nocturnal cooling period...

It's given that some of the events in the Bible did happen. The Flood, even the destruction of Sodam and Gomorrah have some basis in fact. But so does Atlantis. So does Dracula and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. The people who wrote it weren't closed off from history, most of them were scholars.

In a thousand years, someone will probably think Bruce Lee was a god because there are statues on nearly every continent. And they'll be right.